Walter Evans EDGE

(1873-1956)

Senate Years of Service:

1919-1929

Party:

Republican

EDGE, Walter Evans, a
Senator from New Jersey; born in Philadelphia, Pa., November 20,
1873; moved with his parents to Pleasantville, N.J., in 1877;
attended the public schools; employed in a printing office in
Atlantic City, N.J., 1890-1894; newspaper owner and publisher;
journal clerk of the State senate 1897-1899; during the
Spanish-American War served as a second lieutenant; secretary of
the State senate 1901-1904; member, State house of assembly 1910;
member, State senate 1911-1916, serving as president in 1915;
Governor of New Jersey 1917-1919, when he resigned, having been
elected United States Senator; elected as a Republican to the
United States Senate in 1918; reelected in 1924 and served from
March 4, 1919, until his resignation on November 21, 1929, to
accept a diplomatic post; chairman, Committee on Coast and Insular
Survey (Sixty-sixth Congress), Committee on Interoceanic Canals
(Sixty-seventh through Seventy-first Congresses), Committee on Post
Office and Post Roads (Sixty-eighth Congress); appointed Ambassador
to France by President Herbert Hoover 1929-1933; again Governor of
New Jersey 1944-1947; died in New York City, October 29, 1956;
interment in Northwood Cemetery, Downingtown, Pa.

Bibliography

Dictionary of American Biography; Edge, Walter. A
Jerseyman’s Journal, Fifty Years of American Business and
Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948;
Levering, Ralph B. “Partisanship, Ideology, and Attitudes
toward Woodrow Wilson: New Jersey’s Republican Senators and
the League of Nations Controversy, 1918-1920.” New Jersey
History 109 (Fall/Winter 1991): 1-13.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present